toolbandfandomcom-20200215-history
Newsletter May 2000
TOOL NEWSLETTER MAY, 2000 E.V . This month's newsletter is dedicated to the memory of Terrance McKenna, psychonaut extraordinare who passed into Universe B with a refined perichoresis on April 3, 2000 e.v. at 2:15 Pacific Time. Terrance's transformation was brought about by a brain tumor(a genetic trait unrelated to his experimentation with psychoactive substances)which serves as further evidence that humankind was a low-budget creation. Well-equipped for the journey, he's now on that great court betwixt the stars with its denizens of self-dribbling, jeweled basketballs. With the lawsuit now behind them,TOOL continues to make progress doing what they do best- writing music. As to when their next recording will be released, let's just say that there is light at the end of the proverbial tunnel, or to put it poetically: there is a golden penumbra surrounding the eclipse of legal actions taken. "Forgetting who I was for the first time in my life, just a scared little creature with a featureless body, all I could do was feel and see. That is when you know how infinite the universe is, when you have no reference point (cognition). Nothing to compare any thing to. Just a bunch of sensory data experienced by an Infant." - excerpt from a letter by a TOOL fan Q: Is TOOL planning on creating a web page for fan art? A: As you know, TOOL will be launching http://dissectional.com in a couple of months. There will be a section dedicated to fan contributions. If you would like to contribute art, stories, news, or other gossip, you can e-mail contribute@toolband.com or you can snail mail the band at: TOOL 8391 Beverly BLVD. PO BOX 298 Los Angeles, CA 90048 Q: Where can I buy TOOL stuff? A: Good news, the TOOL on-line store will be up this week http://www.toolband.com/shop/index.html Q: Did TOOL use Crowley's Book Four to draw inspiration for any of the lyrics? A: Not really, but as a facet of cosmic consciousness - as its terrestrial expression, both drew inspiration from the same source. Heady stuff, eh? Q: What's new in Danny's bookcase? A: SEX AND ROCKETS: THE OCCULT WORLD OF JACK PARSONS by Jack Carter(Feral House). By day, Jack Parsons was an American rocket-scientist who was one of the founders of the Jet Propulsion Lab. By night, he was a card-carrying member of Aleister Crowley':s OTO, practicing rituals of sex-magick in his Pasadena mansion with a colorful gathering of bohemians, artists, atheists and anarchists that made up the California Agape Lodge. SEX AND ROCKETS is an excellent biography of the Pasadena Wizard, chronicling his early years as a highly-respected scientist and explosives expert to his later days as a disenchanted yet determined occultist who vowed at all costs to cross the abyss, embarking on a Black Pilgrimage which ended with his tragic and mysterious death. THE BESTIRRING OF THE NOMMOS: A SERIOUS MYSTERY REVISITED PART ONE Excerpts from a lecture given at P.U.P. LODGE(Hollywood) by FRATER IJYNX on January 17, 2000 e.v. THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE DOGON 101 for those probationers, neophytes and tertiary members whose drink is other than The Black Wine of Owls There is a great mystery surrounding an African tribe called the Dogon. Like many people, I first became aware of this after reading THE SIRIUS MYSTERY by American orientalist, Robert K.G. Temple. Now, after nearly twenty-five years, Temple's scholarly work is back in print with a new forward by the author containing further revelations to support his case that the earth was visited by an advanced race around 4500 B.C. These beliefs are based on detailed and specific knowledge of sub-Saharan tribal cultures, in particular those of the Dogon who live in the Republic of Mali. It was a report in a 1940s scientific journal entitled "A Sudanese Sirius System" by the French anthropologist team of M. Griaule and G. Deiterlen which prompted Temple to do his own researches into the matter. What had so intrigued him was the fact that the Dogon, a tribe known for their complex cosmology, gave special significance to a star that is totally invisible to the naked eye. The Dogon, it seems, venerate not Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky(as seen from the earth)and relatively close at a distance of 8.7 light years away(about 52 trillion miles), but its invisible companion which the they call Po, named after a tiny cereal grain known as Digitaria. The notion of Sirius A having a companion was first suspected in 1844 by Friedrich Bessel, a German astronomer, who, after ten years of observing peculiarities in the motion of Sirius A, using advanced mathematical computations, deduced that its slight wobbling was the result of the gravitational influence of a companion star. But, it wasn't until 1862 that Alvan Clark first saw the faint companion in his telescope, at the time one of the most sophisticated optical instruments on the planet. Today the dark neighbor is known prosaically as Sirius B, and was first photographed in 1970. If this was the extent of the Dogon's knowledge regarding the Sirius system then we might dismiss the whole thing by saying that they were "just damned lucky guessers" as R.A. Wilson joked in his book, THE COSMIC TRIGGER. But not only do the Dogon know of the invisible companion's existence, they also know that the orbital period of Digitaria is 49.9 years, an event which they celebrate with an elaborate ceremony. Even more astonishing, they know that the orbit of Digitaria is elliptical, and that Sirius A was at one foci of this orbit instead of being at the center which, as Temple points out, one would expect of a "primitive" tribe. And if all that were not enough, the Dogon also claim that Digitaria is one of the heaviest types of stars in the universe , a fact that modern astronomers now know to be true, As it turns out, Sirius B is an exotic type of star known as a white dwarf. So the question is: where did the Dogon, a nearly stone-age tribe, get such detailed information about the Sirius system? According to the Dogon, the answer is that it was imparted by the Nommos, fish-like beings who came down from the skies in ages past and bequeathed to mankind its civilization. The Dogon claim these traditions are at least 800 years old, handed down from generation to generation by the tribal priests. When Temple's book was first published, his skeptics claimed that the Dogon's knowledge must have come from a more mundane source - namely missionaries. Others believed it was all due to chance! On the other side of the coin, those willing to listen to Temple's argument were impressed by his research which, unlike other proponents of the ancient astronaut theory(Von Daniken in particular), was both well-documented and cautious. Temple himself claimed to be embarrassed by the idea of extraterrestrial visitors. Some, myself included, felt the most likely solution was that the original anthropologist team had hoaxed the entire thing. After all, it is only a mystery if a"primitive" African tribe know these things, not members of the scientific community. Temple, himself, must have considered this but chose not to believe it, for, as he points out in the book, Griaule and Deiterlen didn't trumpet this part of the story in their writings, but, instead , merely placed it as a footnote, which stated the question has not been solved, nor even asked, of how men with no instruments at their disposal could know the movements and certain characteristics of stars which are scarcely visible. The telling point here is that they used the word "scarcely visible" when in fact, Sirius B is totally invisible to the naked eye. After reading the book, I came across another strange tale about the Sirius mystery. This was Voltaire's MICROMEGAS, a book published in 1752 about a being from a satellite of Sirius who travels to earth with a dwarf companion to impart wisdom to a certain member of the priesthood! Not only is this an accurate title for describing a dense white dwarf star, but the story is remarkably prophetic in light of what modern astronomers have recently rediscovered. There is also a rather curious story that I read in a pulp from the 1940s which relates to the Sirius mystery. This is a short story called "THE FIRE TRAIL" which appeared "Amazing Stories" VOL 22 #1 from January 1948. It was written by Oge-Make, possibly a native American, who in the summer of 1947(remember this date)had a message of vital importance he wished to convey to the people of the world. In the story , the Indian leaves his body in what today sounds like a remote-viewing experience. The story may contain coded references to visitors from the Sirius system in earth's ancient history. I will talk more about this later, when I discuss the occult tradition surrounding Sirius. But, before we move on, I want to go back to Temple's critics. As it turns out, the Dogon also describe a third star in the Sirius system with an orbiting planet. This star they call "Emme Ya" . When THE SIRIUS MYSTERY was first published there was no observable evidence of this additional companion. This was used as the strongest evidence against the idea of visitation by amphibious beings in our past. Which brings us to the new forward of the recent reprint. In 1995, the existence of a red dwarf star was confirmed. This is called Sirius C. So the Dogon were damned lucky guessers after all!.. Calendar of Events MAY 5..............................PLANETARY ALIGNMENT (END OF THE WORLD?) MAY 10.............................NATIVITY OF A CERTAIN DRUMMER MAY 19.............................. JUSTIN RETURNS TO ENGLAND BRIEFLY TO PURCHASE A VERY RARE JAPANESE KOTO MAY 22............................... "MER DE NOMS,"WILL BE RELEASED Live chat's with TOOL members will be posted in the news THIS WEEK! stay tuned. THANX TO EVERYONE HAPPY TRAILS JUSTIN DANNY MAYNARD ADAM Category:2000 Newsletters